“I want out of this hell.” The previous speaker spoke publicly two days ago As for the Republican member of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, he was more cautious: he said that he wanted to think about his future until the deadline for renomination to Congress expires on December 8th. Another week to understand whether he still wants to practice politics in the chamber where he was the leader of the Republicans for almost ten years, until the recent revolution of far-right parliamentarians that caused his ouster. But in private, and with his campaign donors, he was more direct. After all, for him, a moderate who has often been radicalized to ride Trump’s tiger, the air in Congress has become unbreathable: he was constantly contested by far-right insurgents while he was still in office, and recently he nearly got into a physical confrontation with… Some protest organizers. The conspiracy against him. McCarthy’s case is an extreme but not the only case of abandonment by a Congress almost paralyzed by cross-over vetoes by parliamentarians sickened by the climate of radical dissent, if not constant squabbling, widespread especially in the chamber. The month of November saw a record number of 14 representatives and senators withdraw from running for re-election. In total, there are about forty so far (including high-profile figures like Mitt Romney and Joe Manchin) and their number will increase in the coming weeks.
A large but not large number of abandonment cases (some representatives leave… (Running for the Senate) and the renewal of the political class is not in itself a negative thing given that in America, with the exception of Biden and Trump who are competing for the White House, there are in Congress (average age 60 years) many people who are seventy years old and about Twenty-eighty years: from Democrats Bernie Sanders (82) and Nancy Pelosi (83) to Republican Senators McConnell (81) and Grassley (89). The point is, as David Wasserman makes clear in the official Cook Political Report, that the wave of walkouts this time is mainly about parliamentarians who have great respect for institutions. In short, with political polarization, the replacement of politicians open to discussion (pejoratively labeled as moderates) by Pasdarans who view Parliament as a place of abuse rather than a place of dialogue and search for common solutions will continue in the next Congress.
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